Real Life Matters

From July 1996 until June 1997, Jennifer and I lived in Wuppertal, Germany. I worked that year in the Legal Department of a German automotive paint company.^[1]Herberts GmbH was eventually bought, sold and merged into Axalta.

For a young couple, living in Germany was a thrilling experience, though it was not without challenges. My dad died unexpectedly less than a month after I sent this postcard. I’ll never forget racing home to see him before he died. We were all in the hospital room when he passed and he told us all that he loved us. When he died, he was two years older than I am now, which reminds me that life is both unpredictable and precious.

Getting back to Germany, it was fascinating to work as in-house counsel in a global business. Jennifer coached German executives in English, sang in a local chamber choir, and took painting classes. I worked around the clock (as usual), juggling projects with a laptop (cutting edge tech at that time) and a fax machine. Email was brand new.^[2]Before moving to Germany, I came back to Michigan from a trip to Sweden. I announced to everyone that someday we would all have email, and one of my colleagues laughed it off, saying that, in his … Continue reading I had a weird, numeric email address from CompuServe, but I was not able to send or receive any attachments.

My boss in Germany, Hans-Gerd Ebel, was a delightful, intense fellow.^[3]Sadly, he has since passed away. I tried every day to not disappoint him (as any good co-dependent would), while learning German and doing my best to be a transactional business lawyer. On most days I commuted to work with my colleague, Frank, in the Legal Department. We regularly ate together at the company canteen for lunch. We would wait for the entire team to be seated before picking up our utensils together, saying “Guten Appetit” and looking at each other’s eyes, smiling politely. How different things were when I stepped down from the practice of law in a big law firm in 2019, where people ate lunch mostly À la desk. Now it seems many lawyers hardly go into the office at all.

In the summer of 1997, Jennifer’s sister and brother and their spouses visited us in Wuppertal. We made plans to drive to Paris and meet up with Jennifer’s brother, and his wife, for some sightseeing. On the way to Paris, I stopped to check the oil. I put the dipstick back into its little sleeve (at least, I thought I did) and we resumed our travel.

Soon after, we were speeding along the French autobahn and a sudden popping sound came from under the hood. We pulled over to the shoulder, got out of the car and opened the hood, only to find motor oil everywhere. We called a tow truck from a phone box on the side of the highway. Almost no one had a cell phone at the time. Eventually, a tow truck appeared and whisked us off to a hotel in the French countryside. The hotel did not have any human staff until the next morning. One simply swiped a credit card, which dispensed a room code. I’m sure you can find things like this in big cities today, but in 1997 in rural France, it blew my mind.

Things were a bit awkward as the dealership leasing our Toyota to us was owned by the brother-in-law of my boss. I remember adamantly trying to convince everyone, including myself, that I was not responsible for our car’s engine dying on the French autobahn. I kept saying, over and over, in my best German, “I have seen with my own eyes that the dipstick was put back in the engine before I closed the hood.” I was, of course, deluding no one about the truth. I had messed up the dipstick somehow and caused the engine to seize up on account of a lack of oil. I just couldn’t admit it.

It started early with me. Indeed, I cannot remember a time ever in which I was not trying to be perfect at school, at work, and in life. You know, Type-A personality and co-dependent to the core. I project confidence, and yet below the surface I sometimes still have huge imposter syndrome, a mess of insecurity hiding under a thin veneer of success.

This makes for a sometimes tortured existence. I heard Kirk Gibson recently say words to the effect that he doesn’t want to be here to exist – he wants to be here to live.

Now, I couldn’t agree more!^[4]Kirk Gibson is a fellow PWP (Person with Parkinson’s). He founded the Kirk Gibson Center, which I attend whenever possible. It’s like Cross-fit for PWPs.

I am so grateful that through the miraculous grace, love and support of Jennifer, my family, my friends, and tons of therapy, I have been able to find some peace and live mostly in harmony with myself, which has made it possible, in turn, to live mostly in harmony with everyone else in my life.

“When perfectionism is driving us, shame is riding shotgun and fear is that annoying backseat driver.” – Brene Brown